There are numerous opensource monitoring solutions available, with varying approaches and architectures. In this study, we compare only the 'agent' component of the monitoring solution, and will not consider the server-side component(s). Because, there can be multiple implementation options of the 'server' - for example, with collectd, it could be simple collectd-web or a timeseries database such as Influxdb, telemetry system based on Apache Kafka, etc. - and considering all the options would be extremely difficult. Typically the server side components could include some or all of the following (a) Metric collection infrastructure - raw-metric receiver, message-queues, etc. (b) Metric Modifier - add contexts, perform-aggregation, filter, etc. (c) Storage solution (d) Alarm/Alerting System (e) Visualization/Graphing - dashboards. (f) Publishing.

Terminology Definition

Term

What we mean by that?

Metric

A Measurement of a particular characteristic. Ex: %ge of CPU used, Amount of Bandwidth used, etc. Complete definition can be found here

Event

A record of something that has happened - A simple immutable fact. Example: Link has gone down. A packet from a flow is dropped, etc. Complete definition can be found here

Agent

Software that runs on a node/system that needs to be monitored.

Client Node

A node that is monitored (Node on which agent runs)

Server Node

A node that collects metrics and events from the client node.

Sampling Interval

How frequently the metrics are sent.

Push Mode

Fetching of events by subscribing

Poll Mode

Fetching of events via polling.

Writing of Metrics/events

sending/outputting of metrics or events.

Reading of Metrics/events

receiving/reading of measurements

Logging of Metrics/events

Logging of monitored/received metric or event

Metric Types (data source types)

Guage: Value stored as-is Derive: Derivative - Change of the value (rate) Counter: Similar to Derive - but it is NEVER negative (due to wrap-around) Absolute:

Parameter Table

Parameters\Tools

Collectd

Ceilometer

Polling agent.

Monasca

SNAP

node-exporter and other exporters

sensu client: metric collection plugins

munin

telegraf

NRPE + Plugins

(NSClient++,

ICINGA,

OpenNMS)

diamond

Reimann

Elastic Beats

Note: 1. For some parameters the answer could be just YES/NO, 2. Whereas, for some we may have to provide a description/details 3. For some we may have to choose from the list [], whereas for some we may append a value to the list. 4. For some parameters, please provide the number of 'actual metrics' provided under that category. For example, collectd would provide 12 metrics for Processes-category

4 Comments

thresholding will tell you when particular values are out of a valid range. while filtering allows you to blacklist metrics or send notifications/modify metrics on the platform where they are collected...